Hartpury’s pre-season progresses on Saturday when Rosslyn Park make a welcome appearance at the Gillmans Ground on Saturday (2.30pm), writes Andrew Beacham.

Park have been a thorn in Hartpury’s side over the past three seasons in National One and it was not until the fourth encounter with them, late in the 2015-16 campaign, that Hartpury enjoyed any kind of success against the men from South West London.

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The game follows on from an encouraging opener, away at Premiership team Worcester Warriors where, despite an eventual 21-55 defeat, the squad gave a very good account of themselves for long periods.

“Worcester was a good first run-out for us,” said Hartpury director of rugby, John Barnes.

“We wanted to test ourselves and we certainly did that against a big, powerful Premiership squad.

“We competed really well and were in the game for 50-60 minutes. We were able to front-up physically, which is obviously one of the big concerns for us as we step up into the Championship.

“We did make some mistakes, which cost us tries, and we did lose the game in the end, but we learnt a lot from the experience. It was our first defeat since pre-season last year.

“Happily, we came out of the match in good shape. Our young back rower, Tom Everard, has tweaked an MCL, but it’s nothing serious - maybe a couple of weeks - and the rest of it was mainly bumps and bruises.”

Hartpury director of rugby John Barnes

Both Warriors and Hartpury used plenty of players in the match, something that is likely to be repeated this weekend.

“The Rosslyn Park game will be a similar framework, with quite a big squad being involved, but we will be trying to give some players a little more game-time,” said Barnes.

“Playing against Park has always been a really tough encounter for us. They are one of the best teams in National 1 and have already played against Championship opposition in pre-season, so it’s going to be a good challenge. We were keen to play them and are glad that they have agreed to come down to us.”

One extra item of exciting – and unexpected – news this week is that Hartpury will be fielding a team to play Gloucester Rugby next Friday, as part of a pre-season double-header that also constitutes an element of the testimonial season for Gloucester hero and former Hartpury student, Charlie Sharples.

Charlie Sharples

“Playing Gloucester will mean some changes to our pre-season programme” said Barnes.

“After our fixture with Pontypridd was cancelled due to the early start of the Welsh league, we’d actually decided to not have a game that weekend and go into the opening Championship fixture, at Bristol, well-rested.

“We do have a match with Clifton on the Thursday night (August 24, 7pm at the College) which would have given some guys the chance to get an extra run-out if they needed it, with the bulk of that squad being made up of university players.

“However, having discussed it among the coaches, we were very pleased to take the Gloucester game on.

“It gives us another good test and, just as importantly, gives us a chance to contribute to Charlie’s testimonial. We are really looking forward to it.”